Strange Bedfellows

by BRBrony9

The Storm Breaks

The first chance the uneasy allies had to strike back at the invaders came just minutes after the first landings. A pair of Chaos fighters blazed over the mountain peaks to the east of Ponyville, fast, nimble craft with swept-back wings. The tracking radars on the Imperial anti-air vehicles picked them up straight away. Ponies stared from their windows, awoken by the sounds of running feet and galloping hooves as the town’s defenders scrambled to their positions.

With a deafening roar, a pillar of fire launched itself into the air from a field just west of the town. Guardsponies turned their heads and stared in shock as the surface-to-air missile streaked over the town and threw itself towards the incoming jets. Some of the humans cheered. One of the fighters began to weave from side to side, flares spitting out from its rear fuselage like a string of lanterns, glowing brightly against the dawn sky. The missile’s fiery trail speared towards it, oblivious to the decoys, guided by the radar array on its launch vehicle.

The jet dove for the ground, trying to shake the missile in the ground clutter, but it was too late. The missile, nearly as long as the jet, struck it almost dead centre, and it disintegrated in a fiery blossom, its wreckage ploughing up a field a mile east of town. Another cheer went up from the human defenders. The second jet returned fire, a missile of its own shooting out from under its fuselage and heading toward the EAS Celestia, which, along with the Stalliongrad, was hovering above the town. At the first sign of trouble, however, the airship’s magical shield had gone up, and the missile burst harmlessly against it.

The surviving jet ducked low, trying to avoid a lock-on from the missile battery, and ran straight into a curtain of steel. The platoon of Hydra anti-aircraft tanks stationed around the town opened up with their quad-barrelled flak cannons, hurling hundreds of high-explosive shells into the air and putting up a fearsome barrage through which nothing could hope to pass unscathed.

The jet punched through the wall of flak, rolling almost lazily into a bank to port as its left wing was shredded. It spiralled over the town, losing height rapidly, bounced once and exploded, demolishing a few trees in the corner of the Sweet Apple Acres orchard. A third cheer went up. Ponies stared in astonishment at the display of firepower that had just unfolded in the skies above their hitherto peaceful town. Dirty black smoke bracketed the town, rising from the crash sites of the two jets.

Commissar Van Meegen had assumed command of the town’s defence, the Colonel having led the detachment that had departed for the ponies’ capital city. In his command post in the town hall’s basement, he picked up the handset of the long-range vox.

‘This is Warhammer, go ahead.’ Static still crackled, despite the clear skies and the absence of any potential atmospherics.

‘Warhammer, this is Raven 1-1,’ came the reply from one of the Imperial reconnaissance units. ‘Enemy moving in force south of your position. Estimate several battalion-sized elements moving north along main road, current location eight miles south of town perimeter. Heavy armour present. Please advise, over.’ Van Meegen knew the lightly armed Salamander scout cars were of no use in a fight against an enemy column.

‘Raven 1-1, pull back to the town. We will stop them cold here.’

‘Affirmative, Warhammer. Pulling back now.’ Van Meegen turned to his assembled command staff, which now included Captain Steel Rain of the Equestrian Royal Guard.

‘Alert the troops. Expect contact within thirty minutes. The storm is about to break, gentlemen.’

The city was burning. The sky was burning. She was burning.

Twilight awoke with a start. The nightmares had begun not long after she had managed to finally drop off, in the guest room attached to Princess Luna’s quarters. After staying up half the night observing the skies and seeing at least a half-dozen ships of a similar size to the one that she had seen the night before, Twilight and the Princess knew for certain that the human Captain had spoke the truth.

Either that, or everything had been one vast deception, Luna had said, though even as she said it she doubted if it could be the case. She had instructed Twilight to get some sleep while she maintained her customary watch over the Equestrian night. Sleep had come slowly and fitfully to Twilight, and when it had it was full of death and destruction. Jerking back into consciousness, she could feel what Princess Luna had described to her the evening before; a sense of unease, a malicious presence almost, lurking in the corners of her mind. Something was definitely coming.

She could hear the wailing of Canterlot’s emergency sirens filtering through from the open window. Rubbing her bleary eyes with a hoof, Twilight trotted to the balcony. Princess Luna was already there. At the sounding of the sirens, the city shield had sprung up like a mushroom, colouring the sky above them a deep purple. Unlike its earlier iteration, this shield was not powered by her brother- after the Changeling attack, Princess Celestia had demanded multiple redundancy in the city defences, including its shield. As a result, there were now six powerful Royal Guard unicorns keeping the shield up at any given time. The three City-Class airships still hung in the sky above, now protected by the shield.

Despite the change in the colour of the sky, Twilight could see streaks of distant fire beyond the shield, filling the sky to the south. The streets of the city below echoed with the wail of the sirens and the pounding of hoofbeats.

‘They are coming,’ said the Princess of the night. ‘Whoever they are, they are coming.’

‘Contact!’ Muzzle Flash looked up abruptly at the shout. One of the humans had some kind of binoculars and had seem something through them.

‘Contact south, range one mile. Coming over the ridge,’ he said, pointing across the meadows. The bulk landers and shuttles had been moved overnight to the airfield near Canterlot, and the meadow had been ranged by the Imperial mortar crews. A mile south of town was a small rise in the meadow, and just cresting it now were a number of silhouettes.

‘Stand to, men!’ Lieutenant Jonas shouted. The Guardsmen grabbed their rifles and ducked into their trenches. Behind them, along the makeshift barricades and sandbagged emplacements that had been set up around the town, were more humans, standing shoulder to shoulder with his Royal Guardsponies. Tanks dotted the frontline, including one of the massive Baneblades, dug in behind thickly piled sandbags.

‘Enemy vehicles moving south of us, sir,’ Jonas was now saying into the human’s strange communication device. ‘Looks like a reconnaissance in force. Are we cleared to engage?’

‘Affirmative, Lieutenant,’ came the reply. ‘Engage and destroy all hostile targets. You may fire when ready.’ Jonas spoke a swift string of orders into the handset.

Muzzle Flash could see the enemy moving closer, down the front slope of the mound. He counted six vehicles, similar in size but differing in shape from those of the defenders. Three of them had large, sleek turrets with long-barrelled cannons. They formed an inverse V-formation, and behind them were three smaller, turretless vehicles.

‘Thermals confirm more of them moving along the road,’ someone called over the communications device. Muzzle Flash could see nothing, the road being lined with thickets of trees for most of its visible length. Around him, manning one of the sandbagged positions, his squad gripped their rifles nervously. For a few moments more, as the enemy vehicles crawled closer, nothing happened. Then, abruptly, all hell broke loose.

A deafening bang filled his ears as the nearest tank opened up, its cannon blazing. Muzzle Flash saw a small puff of smoke and flame appear on one of the enemy vehicles. It kept moving for a few seconds, and it seemed to him that the shot had done nothing, but the vehicle slewed to a stop nonetheless.

Another Imperial tank fired, producing a similar effect on one of the smaller vehicles. Then the Baneblade roared into life, belching fire from its main gun. This time the effect was more visual. An orange flash lit the ground around the lead enemy tank as its turret sailed upward like the lid from a pressure cooker. It tumbled to earth, cutting a jagged brown scar in the pristine meadow, as the hull began to burn furiously.

The last enemy tank swung to the right, its gun returning fire. A second later Muzzle Flash heard a buzzing sound, and then saw a puff of dust boil up around the front of the nearest tank. Muzzle Flash understood little of these strange machines, but he knew enough about ballistics and explosives to realise two things. Firstly, the earthen berm piled in front of the Imperial tank had done its job. Secondly, the shells the enemy were firing had not exploded on impact, and therefore must contain no explosive- kinetic energy rounds, he reasoned. Armour piercing.

From somewhere to his right, a blinding red bolt of light flashed across the meadow, and another of the smaller vehicles rolled to a stop, its frontal armour smouldering.

‘New contacts!’ someone shouted. Muzzle Flash saw them straight away- they were suddenly springing up everywhere. Some were coming over the mound, some were appearing in a dip to the right of it, some were nosing their way through the trees along the roadside. The Imperial tanks roared in defiance, hurling their shells toward the enemy. Several of the emplaced weapons he had seen the humans carrying began to join in now, some firing brilliant bolts of light and some firing rockets.

Muzzle Flash heard several more whizzing sounds as the enemy began to fire back, armour-piercing rounds kicking up small puffs of dirt from the berms and sandbags piled in front of the Imperial vehicles. One struck the turret of the nearest vehicle with a resounding clang, like a huge bell being rung. Sparks flew and for a moment he was sure the tank must have been knocked out, but then its cannon flashed with fury and a distant fireball marked its target’s demise.

High explosive rounds were also being fired now. Several fountains of dirt were thrown up just in front of the Imperial trenches, and a direct hit on one of the buildings along the southern edge of town caved in an entire wall and brought the façade crumbling down. By now the civilians were back in the shelters, save for a few stubborn or especially inquisitive ponies. The men in the trenches ducked reflexively as the shells whizzed overhead.

One of the Imperial tanks away to the left took a direct hit. The armour piercing shell smashed through the turret ring and detonated the ammunition. The turret blew itself apart in a spectacular fireball, burning fragments raining down over the rooftops and starting several spot fires.

An explosive round hit the sandbag barricade to the left of Muzzle Flash’s squad. A cloud of sand sprung up, obscuring the view but not the sound of screams. Several members of his squad stared in horror as the sand cleared and the remains of four Imperial troopers became visible. Three were clearly dead, but one was still alive, dragging himself slowly along the ground to the rear, leaving a bloody trail on the ground from his ruined legs. Private Sharpshooter vomited convulsively. Most of his squad had never seen combat before.

‘Medic!’ someone shouted. Muzzle Flash saw two men running to help their wounded comrade. Another man appeared, carrying a large bag. He crouched down beside the wounded man and began to treat him.
Muzzle Flash’s attention was drawn back to the battlefield by a shout from in front of him. The enemy vehicles had already taken heavy losses, but a whole second wave had begun pouring over the hill. Some of the turretless vehicles slewed to a halt and began disgorging infantry from their rear doors. Someone shouted that more of the enemy were moving to the east, bypassing the town entirely.

‘Standby, men!’ Jonas shouted. ‘Prepare to engage enemy dismounts.’ The Guardsmen lined the parapets, their trenches bristling with rifles. Their heavier, longer-range automatic weapons had already begun firing. Muzzle Flash saw several of the enemy fall. The mortars sited in the town opened up, and explosions began to tear through the enemy infantry as they scrambled to find non-existent cover. Their tanks were still coming, driving hard for the town, their cannons blazing and machine guns chattering. Muzzle Flash watched in horror as a line of large-calibre bullets stitched their way across a patch of open ground towards him. He ducked down behind the sandbag barricade. He heard the thwack of bullets striking the sandbags, then something wet splashed across the side of his face. For a moment he was puzzled; the sky was clear, surely it couldn’t be raining? Then he saw Private Tornado.

The Pegasus guardspony was still standing, which surprised Muzzle Flash almost as much as the fact that he was actually still alive at all. The large bullets had carved straight through his chest armour and into his body, cutting paths clean through him and spraying Muzzle Flash with his blood from the exit wounds. Tornado was struggling for breath, his squadmates looking on with horrified expressions. With each tortured gasp, flecks of blood appeared around his mouth. He reached out one hoof, holding onto the sandbags for support, before his legs gave way under him and he collapsed in a heap.

‘Medic!’ Muzzle Flash screamed. ‘Medic!’

Twilight listened as Canterlot’s sirens finally died away with a final drawn-out, descending warble. She could hear nothing unusual, though the city shield deadened any sounds from outside. She had not seen her brother or her friends since the afternoon before in the palace gardens. She knew Shining Armour would be busy, and she was sure her friends had been found something for them to occupy themselves with. After a shower and some breakfast that had been bought to her quarters by a palace servant, Twilight felt much better than she had when she had awoken. Her nightmares were almost forgotten, though she could still feel the darkness at the back of her mind. With the sun now blazing in the sky, Princess Luna had departed to rest, and Twilight found herself alone with her thoughts.

What they had seen in the sky during the night would have been more than enough to worry them even if they had not known what the strange objects hanging in the heavens had been. Knowing what they did, however, made it infinitely worse.

The city was as prepared as it could be for any attack, especially with the human forces also present in considerable number and manning the walls. The shield could repel any attack that any of their enemies had ever been able to throw at Canterlot, but who knew what kinds of weapons these invaders possessed? The very fact that they had spacefaring capability meant that their weaponry was certain to be infinitely more powerful than anything ponykind had managed to develop.

Twilight made her way downstairs, hoping to find somepony she knew. A friendly face would help me calm down, she thought to herself.
The corridor below was busy with servants, messengers and guardsponies, but none of them were known to Twilight. She weaved through the other ponies, heading for a different part of the palace, where she thought she might run into her brother.

She noticed more Royal Guard than usual, flanking most doorways and moving through the corridors. They recognised Twilight and allowed her through, but the extra security unnerved her still further.

All these precautions inside the palace means they’re not confident that they can stop whatever it is that is coming before it gets here…

The young unicorn made her way through the corridors, sensing anxiety in everypony she passed. Even the usually stoic Royal Guard seemed extra alert. Wandering along, ahead of her she spotted a familiar pink pony.

‘Cadence!’ she called. Her sister-in-law turned around in surprise.

‘Twilight! Shining Armour told me you were here! How are you?’ She trotted over to Cadence and they embraced each other.

‘I...well, I would be better, but…’ Twilight said, glancing out of a nearby window. Cadence grimaced.

‘Of course. I feel like I’m dead weight here. There’s nothing I can do except wait!’ she sighed in frustration. ‘At least Luna has been keeping you busy.’ Twilight nodded.

‘Yeah…we were up half the night,’ she explained. ‘We thought maybe we could figure something out by looking at the…ships, or whatever you call them, in orbit. Something that might help us.’

‘And…did you?’ Cadence asked. Twilight shook her head.

‘No…all it did was make us tired and worried. If they are coming to attack us, and they possess such vessels, then…what kind of weapons are they going to have?’ Twilight looked up at Cadence. Her former foalsitter looked nervous too.

‘I don’t know,’ she began, ‘but worrying about it won’t help us. We need to have faith in our military, and…in these humans, even though we know so little about them. After all, everything they have said so far has proven to be true. It would be a grave mistake to stop trusting them at this point. Maybe after this invasion has been dealt with, but not before.’ Twilight heard the sense in her sister-in-law’s words.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We should be careful, but our priority right now is dealing with this invasion. Whatever these humans want, we can sort it out later. Well,’ Twilight said, ‘I’d love to stay and chat some more, but I’m looking for my friends. Do you know where they are?’

‘Shining Armour said they were going to be helping out in the kitchens, making emergency rations,’ Cadence replied.

‘I’d better go see how they’re doing. Stay safe,’ Twilight said, crossing horns with Cadence as a gesture of farewell. ‘I’ll come find you when I can!’ Cadence waved with a hoof as Twilight trotted off toward the palace kitchens.

Like the rest of the palace, the kitchens were a hive of anxious energy. Ponies moved to and fro, cooking, cleaning, carrying stacks of food. The kitchen staff, used to providing for sumptuous royal banquets and state occasions, had been pressed into service making the simplest possible fare for emergency rations; slices of plain white bread, soup, biscuits, slabs of plain chocolate.

On the far side of the chaotic kitchen, Twilight could see a cluster of familiar colours.

‘Girls!’ she called. Her friends all looked up in unison. She trotted over to them.

‘Twilight!’ Rainbow Dash said. ‘Where have you been? We thought you’d only be gone for a couple of hours!’

‘So did I, but Princess Luna wanted me to help her with her astronomical observations,’ she explained. ‘Then it was the middle of the night, so she told me I should get some sleep, so…’

‘We understand, darling,’ Rarity said, placing a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, we have been kept plenty busy! Why, I have had a marvellous time in the palace. First they had me making up bandages in the…what did they call it?’

‘Casualty Clearing Station,’ Rainbow, obsessed with the Wonderbolts and all things military, answered. ‘It’s where they take the wounded after they leave the frontline aid posts, before they get evacuated to one of the hospitals.’ Rarity blinked.

‘Yes, that. They had me rolling bandages there. The nurses have the most wonderful uniforms there! I would look just darling in one, don’t you think?’ Spike began to blush.

‘Yeah, that was last night! Then this morning they had us come to the kitchens, and that’s where we’ve been ever since, and I was like, ‘oh hey we can make candy!’ But they said no, we had to make emergency rations, but they’re making chocolate over there, so it’s not all bad!’ Pinkie Pie spouted, grinning.

‘Well, that’s all really useful work. You girls should feel proud!’ Twilight said.

‘Oh, we do,’ Fluttershy said. ‘I wanted to help the poor animals in the gardens. They must be terrified by all the noise and activity, but they said that wasn’t really important right now, and they made us do this instead. But I suppose they’re right…’

‘That’s probably for the best,’ Rainbow said, putting a hoof round Fluttershy. ‘After all, we know what happened last time you tried to talk to the animals in Canterlot…’ The yellow Pegasus blushed a deep red.

‘So, did y’all learn anythin’ with the Princess?’ Applejack asked, wiping sweat from her brow. ‘Boy, it sure is warm in here…’ Twilight shook her head.

‘No. At least, nothing useful. All it did was worry us more.’

‘Aw shucks, Twi,’ Applejack said. ‘There’s no sense in fussin’ over it all. There’s nothin’ we can do about it, at least not yet, so y’all might as well just try ta relax and do somethin’ constructive. Like us!’ she smiled at her friends.

‘I know! Cadence just told me the same thing, but...I can’t stop worrying! What about Ponyville? What if it gets attacked?’ Rarity put her hoof back on Twilight’s shoulder.

‘Try not to worry, darling. I know it’s difficult, but all it does is make you stressed. Perhaps we could go to the spa? That would surely calm you down.’ Twilight stared at her.

‘The spa? At a time like this? Are you nuts?’

‘She’s right, Twilight,’ Rainbow Dash said. ‘Not about the spa, but about calming down. No use getting stressed over something that’s out of your control. After all, you heard what the humans said. They have a bunch of troops in Ponyville now, plus our own Royal Guard are there, and, hey, maybe even the Wonderbolts!’ She smiled proudly at the thought.

‘You’re right, girls,’ Twilight said. ‘Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe Ponyville won’t be attacked at all…’

Comments

[Bronzer]

And the sky falls on your technicolor heads.

[CaptainPipsqueak]

Tornado? More like "Tomato", amIrite?

[Super Ponyman]

‘You’re right, girls,’ Twilight said. ‘Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe Ponyville won’t be attacked at all…’

Twi, your tempting fate. Don’t Do THAT.

[TheAbsoluteRadiance]

‘Casualty Clearing Station,’ Rainbow

Missed chance for Casualty Clearing Camp.

[droid]

‘You’re right, girls,’ Twilight said. ‘Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe Ponyville won’t be attacked at all…’

about that